Well, that’s a bit of a lie. I don’t think any bloggers, journalists, writers, etc. have been arrested at this time simply for criticizing Islam (though several have certainly received death threats resulting from their stance concerning Islam and the teachings of the Qur’an.) Of course, I’m referring to arrests only in the United States, and there have been none at this point (just don’t plan on doing any blogging in Egypt.) However, if CAIR continues to construct the slippery slope they have been fervently building, especially since 9/11, while more and more U.S. politicians arise who are either radical Islamic supporters or dhimmi politicians (legion) who, through their apologia and capitulating tendencies, contribute to that fallacious waterslide, I do not doubt that America may one day soon be witness to Islamic persecution of free speech and those who defy the CAIR mandate by exercising their right to speak out in defiance of politically correct appeasement in all things Muslim.

For now though, The Council on American-Islamic Relations must be content to simply punish the vigilant citizens who by random coincidence happened to have purchased a seat on the same plane with six imams who recklessly acted out intentionally (and I will even say maliciously) in order illicit the response they were obviously hoping for from the other passengers on flight 300–circumspectly uneasy. As a result not only has CAIR pronounced their intentions against US Airways and the Minnesota Metropolitan Airports Commission, but their apparent veridical scheme lies buried deep within the verbiage of the lawsuit itself. They are suing several of the November 20 US Airways flight passengers whose diligence assisted in escorting the Islamic clerics off of the plane.

Yet the suspicions and subsequent actions taken by those passengers and the flight crew were more than appropriate, and I doubt there are many who would react differently if presented a similar situation. Of course, the understandable passenger relfex is exactly the reaction CAIR was most likely hoping for so they could then proceed with a lawsuit that will attempt to annihilate racial/religious profiling for Muslims in airports, et al.

So were the flying imams really racially or religiously discriminated against? Of course not. If those six, presumably mature adult men would have simply boarded the aircraft and taken their assigned seats (they took up positions mirroring the terrorists of the 9/11 attacks), without causing the accompanying choreographed ruckus they ended up perpetrating, then nothing would have happened.

It was not the staff of US Airways or the other passengers who racially and religiously profiled and persecuted the imams; it was the imams themselves who flew their own bigoted colors by purposefully discriminating against themselves with their bizarre and contemptible stunt.

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 The “flying imams’ ” federal lawsuit, filed this week in Minneapolis, has made headlines around the country. The imams are demanding unspecified damages from US Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission, both with deep pockets. But their suit includes other defendants, as yet unnamed. These people, unaffiliated with the airline industry or government, are among the imams’ most vulnerable targets.

Recall the November 2006 incident that gave rise to the suit. The imams engaged in a variety of suspicious behaviors while boarding a US Airways flight, according to the airport police report. Some prayed loudly in the gate area, spoke angrily about the United States and Saddam, switched seats and sat in the 9/11 hijackers’ configuration, and unnecessarily requested seatbelt extenders that could be used as weapons, according to witness reports and US Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader.

After extensive consultations, the pilot asked authorities to remove the imams for questioning, which they did, releasing them later that day.

“The pilot did what he had to do,” passenger Rita Snelson of Maplewood told the Star Tribune. “I told the airline afterward, ‘Thank you for watching over us.’ ”

The imams’ lawsuit, however, asserts that US Airways and the MAC acted solely out of religious and ethnic discrimination. It includes 17 separate counts.

It also rehearses a catalogue of harms allegedly suffered by the imams, including fear, depression, mental pain and financial injury. They have not only endured exhaustion, humiliation and ridicule, but also have lost sleep and developed anxiety about flying.

Their lawsuit appears to be the latest component in a national campaign to intimidate airlines and government agencies from acting prudently to ensure passenger safety. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is advising the imams, is also calling for congressional hearings and promoting federal legislation to “end racial profiling” in air travel. If the legislation passes, airport personnel who disproportionately question passengers who are Muslim or of Middle Eastern origin could be subject to sanctions.

But the most alarming aspect of the imams’ suit is buried in paragraph 21 of their complaint. It describes “John Doe” defendants whose identity the imams’ attorneys are still investigating. It reads: “Defendants ‘John Does’ were passengers … who contacted U.S. Airways to report the alleged ’suspicious’ behavior of Plaintiffs’ performing their prayer at the airport terminal.”

Paragraph 22 adds: “Plaintiffs will seek leave to amend this Complaint to allege true names, capacities, and circumstances supporting [these defendants’] liability … at such time as Plaintiffs ascertain the same.”

In plain English, the imams plan to sue the “John Does,” too.

Who are these unnamed culprits? The complaint describes them as “an older couple who was sitting [near the imams] and purposely turn[ed] around to watch” as they prayed. “The gentleman (’John Doe’) in the couple … picked up his cellular phone and made a phone call while watching the Plaintiffs pray,” then “moved to a corner” and “kept talking into his cellular phone.”

In retribution for this action, the unnamed couple probably will be dragged into court soon and face the prospect of hiring a lawyer, enduring hostile questioning and paying huge legal bills. The same fate could await other as-yet-unnamed passengers on the US Airways flight who came forward as witnesses.

The imams’ attempt to bully ordinary passengers marks an alarming new front in the war on airline security. Average folks, “John Does” like you and me, initially observed and reported the imams’ suspicious behavior on Nov. 20. Such people are our “first responders” against terrorism. But the imams’ suit may frighten such individuals into silence, as they seek to avoid the nightmare of being labeled bigots and named as defendants.

Ironically, on the day the imams filed their suit, a troubling internal memo came to light at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The memo revealed that our airport is at particular risk of terrorist attack because of its proximity to the Mall of America, its employment of relatively few security officers and other factors. The memo advised heightened vigilance to counter “this very real and deliberate threat.”

The imams may not be the only ones losing sleep and growing more afraid of flying.

The below is linked from Jihadwatch.org. Since I frequently post about Islamic, Muslim, and jihadist issues, I thought it would be beneficial, not only to others who might have a passing interest in what Islam entails, but also to those who would like to fortify their general understanding of the subject–people with a thirst for more knowledge in this area. People like me for example.

If however, you’d rather simply begin with a general understanding of Islam, the Qur’an, and global jihad, the Islam 101 piece at Jihadwatch by writer Gregory M. Davis, PhD, author of Religion of Peace? and director of the highly informative documentary, Islam: What the West Needs to Know, is a great way to begin one’s apprenticeship on this matter, particularly if you are searching for the non-whitewashed, politically incorrect version offered by such groups and peoples as CAIR, George Galloway, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and Jimmy Carter–a tiny shortlist of appologists and obfuscators. In other words, this is an excellent beginning in ones’ enlightenment to the truth.

Islam 101 is meant as an educational tool for people to become more educated about the fundamentals of Islam and to help the more knowledgeable better convey the facts to the uninitiated. All should feel free to distribute and/or reproduce it. It will become a new menu item at JW soon. Enjoy!

3) The Basics
a) The Five Pillars of Islam
b) The Quran — the Book of Allah
c) The Sunnah — the “Way” of the Prophet Muhammad
d) Sharia Law

4) Jihad and Dhimmitude

a) What does “jihad” mean?
b) Muslim Scholar Hasan Al-Banna on jihad
c) Dar al-Islam and dar al-harb: the House of Islam and the House of War

i) Taqiyya — Religious Deception

d) Jihad Through History

i) The First Major Wave of Jihad: the Arabs, 622-750 AD
ii) The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 AD

e) The Dhimma
f) Jihad in the Modern Era

5) Frequently Asked Questions

a) What about the Crusades?
b) If Islam is violent, why are so many Muslims peaceful?
c) What about the violent passages in the Bible?
d) Could an Islamic “Reformation” pacify Islam?
e) What about the history of Western colonialism in the Islamic world?
f) How can a violent political ideology be the second-largest and fastest-growing religion on earth?
g) Is it fair to paint all Islamic schools of thought as violent?
h) What about the great achievements of Islamic civilization?

6) Glossary of Terms

7) Further Resources

1. Introduction

My book and documentary are meant to serve as concise explanations of the major moving parts of Islam and their implications for Western society. They are meant as remedies to the often confused, misleading, and cluttered public discussions of Islam, which tend to leave the layman as much in the dark as to Islam’s nature and intentions as he was before. Islam 101 is a condensation of the book and documentary with the aim of lending clarity to the public understanding of Islam and of exposing the inadequacy of the prevailing views. It is also intended as a tool by which those more familiar with Islam’s true nature and goals may more effectively represent the facts to the uninformed.

Here is the second part of Islam 101. (It didn’t all fit the first time.)

d. Jihad Through History

In 622 AD (year one in the Islamic calendar, AH 1), Muhammad abandoned Mecca for the city of Medina (Yathrib) some 200 farther north in the Arabian peninsula. In Medina, Muhammad established a paramilitary organization that would spread his influence and that of his religion throughout Arabia. Because there has never been a separation of the political-military and the religious in Islam, this development was entirely natural by Islamic principles. By the time of his death in 632 AD, Muhammad had extended his control in a series of raids and battles over most of southern Arabia. The conquered populations of these areas either had to submit to Muslim rule and pay a protection tax or convert to Islam.

What follows is a tragic tale of hubris brought low, of pride diminished, and of ego (hopefully) deflated.

What do you know of Islam? Have you ever read the Qur’an? Do you know how the sura, the chapters, are laid out and organized within the book? If you do, kudos. If you don’t, you’re not alone. Even a self-proclaimed expert on Islam has recently been found to have no idea what is in the Qur’an, or even simply how it is laid out, chapter by chapter. More on that later.

Of my own accord, I have only been a part-time student of Islamic ideology and the concept of global jihad since the summer of 2006, about the time the Israeli/Lebanon war began. Among other bastions of information, including Chronicles magazine contributor, Serge Trifkovic, I have found Robert Spencer’s Jihadwatch.org an excellent resource on Islamic jihadism and the resulting destruction of the west and western values as a result of muslim extremism. Mr. Spencer, in my view, is one of the leading experts in this area who possesses one of the few voices of reason in a wilderness of Islamic apologists, capitulators, dissemblers, and seditionists who work to deflect any concept of Islamic imperfection and attack by those who simply wish to solicit much needed discussion on the topic of Islam and the Qur’an and the place of both in modern, civilized societies.

Spencer rightly points to that holy muslim book, the Qur’an, as the basis for the perceived justification of violent jihad that we see in the world today, as it was the basis for the comparable violent jihad of centuries past. In the eyes of muslims the world over, the Qur’anic prophet Muhammad is the embodiment of the perfect man–the man all the faithful should endeavor to emulate (despite his modern moral failings.)

Reading the Qur’an reveals pretty much everything one needs to know concerning muslim (particularly the extremists) traditions and actions and the subsequent violence preached there in, assuming you can understand it (the hadith, or traditions of the prophet Muhammad, is another source.) Muslim belief is predicated on the conceit that Islam is the one true religion and all other religions are not only false, but in need of eradication entirely through voluntary or forced conversion to Islam, relegation to demeaning Dhimmi status, or killed. Regardless, everyone will exist under the oppressive theocratic umbrella of the Sharia–Islamic law.

So that’s the most basic of what I have learned, which is meticulously, sensibly and, logically backed up by qualified voices like Robert Spencer and Serge Trifkovic.

Adversely, there are many vocal charlatans who claim Islamic scholarship–who even excel in deceiving adherents into blindly accepting whatever they happen to spew forth at any given time simply because they’re proficient in beguilement (and honestly, most are receptive mainly due to their lemming-like need to follow someone or something.) Such is the likes of best-selling author, Dinesh D’Souza.

D’Souza’s latest book, The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 is an exercise in inconsistency, and claims pretty much as the title reads–Hillary Clinton, Noam Chomsky, Justin Timberlake, and basically everyone liberal and everything decadently Hollywood, bears responsibility for the rise in modern jihad and the pushing of moderate muslims into the arms of extremists. Needless to say, many on the left and the right of the political debate find D’Souza’s claims and conclusions presented in his new book anything if not laughable.

Many have been extremely vocal in their disagreement with D’Souza and the concepts presented in The Enemy At Home, (with an exceptionally hilarious appearance on The Colbert Report where the obtuse D’Souza sat firmly in the butt-of-the-joke chair, unbeknownst to him) including Robert Spencer and Serge Trifkovic. After Spencer rightly denounced the book here, D’Souza’s response was rather defensive with a marginal amount of childish pedantry and a good deal of red herring thrown in for good measure. In fact, it seems that anytime D’Souza argues for a position, he often becomes entangled within a web of logical fallacies of his own making–straw men and ad hominem being two of his favorite squabbling tactics.

Never one to shy from debate, Spencer (who regularly encourages those who disagree with his assessment of Islam engage with him in polemic discussion on the subject) agreed to sit on a panel during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week with D’Souza as his opponent.

PART 1

PART 2

D’Souza excels at obfuscation and diversion (again, he employs many logical fallacies including those mentioned above.) He repeatedly ignores cognizant and commonsense statements made by Spencer while he recklessly sallies forth in defense of his stance to the point where he completely digresses from claims made in his book if only to appear the conquering hero to the collected audience, and be damned The Enemy at Home.

Regardless of that outcome, D’Souza felt the continued need to beat his chest and express his supposed superior position by treading the same ground that had been covered in the CPAC debate the day previous, despite the fact that Spencer adequately addressed every issue raised by D’Souza.

Yesterday I debated Robert Spencer at the Conservative Political Action Committee annual conference in WashingtonD.C. The debate was aired live on C-Span. Our topic was essentially, Is Islam the Problem? My book The Enemy at Homesays no, locating the problem in the way that liberal foreign policy and liberal values projected abroad have strengthened radical Islam and emboldened it to attack us. Spencer’s books collectively answer yes, the problem is with Islam itself.

But Islam has been around for 1300 years and the problem of Islamic terrorism is a recent one. How can Islam be to blame? For me the intelligent question is: what is it about Islam today that has made it an incubator of a certain kind of fanaticism and terrorism?

Dinesh D’Souza has blogged here, in “Letting Bin Laden Define Islam,” about our debate yesterday. I am still at CPAC and don’t have much time to give a full answer, but since he repeats some familiar canards about me and my books, which I still think he shows no signs of having read despite his claims to the contrary, I thought I’d post some preliminary thoughts. For one thing, it is worth noting that he made exactly these points in the debate yesterday, and I answered them, but he takes no account here of the answers. Instead, he just continues to make the charges, as if I have said nothing in response at all. Personally, I don’t think this kind of thing is a very fruitful avenue for dialogue.

This is getting almost as good as ringside seats at the battle of Badr. To me, and I would hope to any who have read to this point, Spencer has done nothing but logically and reasonably state his position without resorting to character attacks, fallacious analysis, or hasty generalizations as D’Souza frequently seems to do.

A recurrent theme that runs throughout the interactions between Robert Spencer and Dinesh D’Souza, whether in person for face to face debate, or over the internet through written discourse, is the continued question of not all encompassing expertise on the subject of Islam and Islamic ideology, but of something as simple as common courtesy–reading and understanding the works of your opponent. When one claims expertise on a subject, one is expected to have studied a considerable amount of material that not only supports an idea or concept, but one is also expected to have studied the antithesis of that subject in order to formulate strategies of refutation when confronted by the opposition. For example, and to bring myself into this, while I find I stand to the right of the political aisle on many issues, I prefer to get both sides of the story, so to speak. To do so, I personally subscribe to both the liberal publication The Nation and the conservative periodicalNational Review. I believe it is important for anyone who takes a firm stand on any given issue to do this in order to form a more fully realized concept of a particular subject.

While Mr. Spencer obviously adheres to this approach evidenced by his review of Mr. D’Souza’s book, the same, I believe, cannot be claimed by Dinesh. Over and over, Robert Spencer asks D’Souza if he’s even read any of his books. Dinesh usually waves Spencer away with a casual affirmative–of course he’s read Spencer’s books, or so he claims. As one who has read several of Robert Spencer’s books, as well as articles from magazines with daily visits to Jihadwatch and Dhimmiwatch, it has become evident to me that D’Souza has not read any books penned by Spencer due to the simple fact that D’Souza seems blithely ignorant of basic Islamic thought, which is the cornerstone of Spencer’s writing.

Unfortunately, this had not been proven… UNTIL NOW! (Apologies for the drama.) Enter Serge Trifkovic, author of such notable books as Sword of the Prophet and Defeating Jihad, regular contributing writer to Chronicles magazine, and defiler of connivers and hypocrites. During his debate with D’Souza, something quite interesting, but not surprising was discovered–Dinesh D’Souza, self-proclaimed expert of Islam, knows not even the most general concepts of Islamic ideology, theology, and the Qur’an.

Here is an excerpt from that debate…

TRIFKOVIC: This is really rich. First of all, to claim that the Kuran is a pacifist tract…

D’SOUZA: I didn’t say it’s a pacifist tract.

TRIFKOVIC: Well, you do say that people like Spencer and I pick and choose. Have you actually read the Kuran? Have you ever actually read the Kuran?

D’SOUZA: Of course I have.

TRIFKOVIC: Do you know how are the Suras arranged?

D’SOUZA: They are… er… they are not arranged in any chronological order… er… [pause] and… er… [pause] and so I quote in my book both the violent and…

TRIFKOVIC: Just tell me how ARE they arranged.

D’SOUZA: The other point…

TRIFKOVIC: Can you just tell me how are the Suras arranged?

D’SOUZA: … right. You can’t just call…

TRIFKOVIC: Why don’t you just tell me how are the Suras arranged?

HENNEN: OK, one at a time here; your question for Dinesh, Serge, is?

TRIFKOVIC: In what order are the Suras arranged in the Kuran?

D’SOUZA: [long silence] I really don’t know what you mean by that. When you say “in what order” then… err… [pause] there…

TRIFKOVIC: … an interlocutor who tries to pass authoritative judgments on the subject is refusing to tell me how are the Suras and the verses of the Kuran arranged. They happen to be arranged by SIZE, from short to long!

Spencer adds…

The interview goes on for another 10 minutes or so. Meanwhile, Serge tells me: “To avoid misunderstanding, let me point out that my ‘explanation’ to D’Souza about the arrangement of the Suras in the Kuran (‘They happen to be arranged by SIZE, from short to long!’) was not a slip, it was the final proof-positive of his fraud, as HE DID NOT CORRECT ME but went on babbling…”

Yes, at this point it is quite safe to say Dinesh D’Souza is a fraud. How can we believe his claim to have read the work of Robert Spencer if he hasn’t even read the one book he should have read in order to write his best-selling book. Even in my own limited time engaged in the study of Islam, I know the suras are arranged from longest to shortest, and I learned this very early on. Assuming one knows even a quarter as much as myself, this is not something one needs to think long about, nor was Trifkovic’s question an attempt at trickery–it was as straight forward as one could make it.

So it is no longer necessary to buy or read The War at Home, even though I would usually encourage everyone to investigate opposing viewpoints to their beliefs. Justifiably, D’Souza has been proven nothing more than the conservative author’s version of James Frey.

Anyone debating Dinesh D’Souza should be sure to do exactly as Serge Trifkovic did. Simply ask D’Souza a question or two about the most obvious and elementary of matters.

If nothing else, it will force him, after his “four years of studying Islam” to little effect, to actually have to start studying it — if only so as not to play the fool in public. Why, who knows? It may force him to learn something.

I can think of a dozen things right off the bat that Spencer or Trifkovic or others could ask D’Souza — very elementary things, but things I am sure he will not be able to answer.

He now has three choices:

1) Be shown up for an ignoramus, prating about things he knows very little, almost nothing, about.

2) Be forced to study Islam, and in so doing, he may have to modify some of his views.

3) Never appear where anyone can debate or even cross-question him about his knowledge of Islam.

I think Dinesh D’Souza will choose #3.

#1 is something he obscurely realizes he is, but like the mountebank hawking his wares at the County Fair, he has assumed that no one will call him on his hollow claims. But he can no longer assume that.

#2 requires work. It requires study. It requires thought. It requires making sense of many different things, of connecting the thigh-bone to the ankle-bone, in order the Hear the Word of the (Islamic) Lord. D’Souza long ago lost the habit of study, like so many of the pontificators of our day.

#3 it will be.

No more debates, for Dinesh D’Souza, with anyone at all. But what if — for him, a hellish What If — some of those interviewing him started to bone up on Islam, and asked him questions? What if on Talk Shows there were callers who would call up pretending that they were about to ask one thing, and then suddenly asked D’Souza one or more of those questions, the ones he cannot answer, to what should be his own great shame and chagrin? Then where would he be?

And the same can be done at those appearances he solicits for “Corporate Audiences” and “University Audiences.” It is perfectly legitimate, it is hardly harassment, to simply ask him a few questions to see if this self-minted and self-described “expert on Islam” who has “studied it for four years” in fact knows anything.

Why, let’s begin with the isnad-chain, and the work, and relative authority, of the muhaddithin. Or with “naskh.” Or “fiqh” or “tafsir.” Or for that matter, “Jihad” (give support for various definitions), or “dhimmi” or “Ahl al-dhimma.”

And say, just what did happen at the Khaybar Oasis? And who was Asma bint Marwan? And who was little Aisha, and of what contemporary relevance is her story? And who can issue a fatwa, and what is the difference between a fatwa and a rukh? And what is the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya, and why does it matter? And who was Abu Bakr? Ali? Hussein? And what does the phrase “al-masjid al-aksa” mean, and who decided what that phrase must refer to?

As I said, let’s keep it very simple — at first. By degrees, the questions can become more difficult.

Don’t worry. I have faith that no matter how hard Dinesh D’Souza starts studying now, he simply won’t be able to figure it all out. Not given the list of his authorities. Not given his mental incapacity.

There is more on the entrepreneur and world-conqueror Dinesh D’Souza, from the best source of information about Dinesh D’Souza: the Dinesh D’Souza website, where the copy is written by — Dinesh D’Souza.

Would you like Dinesh D’Souza to speak to your business convention, or perhaps to enlighten an annual meeting of the stockholders in Phoenix or Boca Raton? Well, you have come to the right place when you go to http://www.dineshdsouza.com, because according to Dinesh D’Souza at http://www.dineshdsouza.com:

“Dinesh D’Souza is one of the nation’s most popular and acclaimed speakers for business and university audiences, and has been a featured guest on many popular television programs, including the Today Show, Nightline, O’Reilly Factor, Good Morning America, and The Dennis Miller Show.He speaks at top universities and business groups across the country, and among his recent engagements are the annual World President’s Organization conference, Forbes CEO Summit, Harvard University, and the University of Virginia.

Mr. D’Souza is available to speak on a variety of subjects relating to contemporary business, politics and culture, including:

THE CULTURAL LEFT AND ITS ROLE IN 9/11

THE LIBERAL-ISLAMIC ALLIANCE

THE WAR AGAINST THE WAR ON TERROR

AMERICA AND ITS ENEMIES

ISLAM AND THE WEST: A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS?

WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT AMERICA

WHY AMERICA IS LOVED, WHY AMERICA IS HATED

THE MORAL DEBATE OVER TECHNOLOGY AND CAPITALISM

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION? NO. REPARATIONS? NO.”

Hurry and call now to book Dinesh D’Souza for your next corporate or university event.

Don’t delay. Operators are standing by.

No, sorry, let me correct that:

An Operator Is Standing By.

That operator’s name is on the cover of the latest issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. The issue appears to have been written by the Development Office, hoping to win favor from some rich Muslim alumni — for it is otherwise difficult to explain the special solicitude for the clear tone of apologetics.

The two articles listed on the cover (which has a nice crescent and star) under the main line “Understanding the Muslim World” are:

1) What’s New in Islamic and Arabic Studies, by Andrea Useem ’95.

In this article you can learn all about what students are learning about — and it isn’t the unadorned contents of Qur’an, hadith, and Sira. The words “dhimmi” and “Jizyah” are unlikely to be much in evidence in the Dartmouth classes on offer, but the innocent and impressionable students won’t discover that in most other colleges either — and will just have to pick up a real knowledge of “Islamic and Arabic studies” outside the confines of MESA Nostra (google “MESA Nostra” for more).

2) “Radical Islam: Why We’ve Got it All Wrong,” by Dinesh D’Souza.

In this article you can learn why “we’ve got it all wrong” — all of us: Snouck Hurgronje and Arthur Jeffery, St. Clair Tisdall and Joseph Schacht, David Margoliouth and Edmond Fagnan, Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq and Hans Jansen, everyone who was a student of Islam in the Western world, in the golden, unafraid age, from about 1860 to 1960, when truths were told. Islam didn’t change. The texts and teachings of Islam didn’t change. What changed was the willingness of Western scholars to tell the truth about Islam. Now there is a climate of correctness and desire to blame the West. This attitude grew and grew until it now suffocates even baby truths in their cribs, as they attempt to let out their first squeals.

And “we’ve got it all wrong” if “we” are Ali Sina, and Ibn Warraq, and Irfan Khawaja, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Anwar Shaikh, and Azam Kamguian — “we” who have been born into Islam, pondered it deeply, considered carefully what it is about it that led us, each on his own, to come to conclusions that forced us to jettison Islam. “We’ve” got it as wrong as C. Snouck Hurgronje and Joseph Schacht.

But one person, above all other persons, has it right.

And his name is Dinesh D’Souza.

And he is right about Islam, as about so many things, when all the world has heretofore gotten it wrong.

Dinesh D’Souza, it should not be forgotten, is available for corporate and university speaking engagements.

For more information, simply click on http://www.dineshdsouza.com and then on “Events” or “Corporate Speaking” or “University Speaking.”

Then you may contact Dinesh D’Souza directly to find out more details — especially about the fees.

Don’t worry. Those fees are really, under the circumstances — what with Dinesh D’Souza getting it at long last right when all of the rest of us have “got it all wrong” — those fees are really very modest.

There was a moment several months ago when my good friend, John and I became embroiled in a heated debate focusing on Israel’s attack of and drive into Lebanon during July of 2006. Now Dubbed the July War or commonly known in Israel as The Second Lebanon War, I expressed my belief that, whether one believes Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is an effective leader or not, due to the circumstances involving the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, Olmert had to act or face the perception from those who support violent aggression against Israel that Olmert would have no will to defend and fight for the country and for the Israeli people. Despite the eventual outcome of that month-long conflict, and the subsequent loss of Israeli confidence in their newly appointed ad hoc leader, there was left little doubt that Olmert would commit to protecting the nation.

As tends to occur, my friend who passionately supports the Palestinian cause, began intensely referencing particular actions and specific examples of Israeli crimes against Palestinians, most notably the Phalangist massacre of 1982 which still evidences doubt as to categorical, direct involvement of the IDF (Maronite Christian forces committed the massacre; whether Israeli forces knew or didn’t know what was taking place within the Palestinian refugee camps is still unclear. Regardless, the IDF’s perimeter around the refugee camps prohibited Palestinians any escape from the marauding Maronite militias. This does not diminish the fact that Israel is one of the leading human rights adherents on the face of the planet, not to mention the only democracy in the Middle-east with a judiciary that is near second to none.)

As I’ve said, John is passionate and intense, and I do become easily flustered in verbal arguments especially when he and I come face to face. Needless to say, we don’t participate in too many political debates, but one thing I did learn from that experience is how little I knew about the Israel/Palestinian conflict specifically and the Middle-east in general. In essence, the respect I have for my friend inspired me because of my ignorance, regardless of our differences.

Since last summer I have set out on a personal crusade, or more appropriately a jihad in order to educate myself in such matters. Through books, magazines, and websites, I have learned more than I have ever known about the Middle-east and the geopolitical/religiopolitical enfilade that encompasses the region.

Inevitably, and in order to better understand the motivations of the inhabitants in that part of the world, I was compelled to ascertain more information about the majority belief systems in the Middle-east–Islam. My general studies did not lead me to others who would formulate my opinion for me. Rather, I came to conclusions that centered around the idea that Islam is a repressive, intolerant, and expansionist faith based around the idea of capitulation to Allah, subjugation, or death. After that, after I had worked out my own conceptions and conclusions, then I came across such websites as Jihadwatch.com and The Gates of Vienna–websites with writers and scholars whose ideas matched my perceptions of Islamic ideology.

From Jihad Watch, below is another fantastic piece by Hugh Fitzgerald about the rise of those (namely infidels) who wish to learn more about Islam who also end up being faced with the concept of global jihad. My recent experiences and discoveries stemmed from an argument with a friend as well as the continued fallout from 9/11 and the subsequent and unjustified war in Iraq. There may be many paths to Allah, but there are also many paths to discovering the truth about Islam.

Those at the Emory Wheel are reduced to this transparent nonsense of Taqiyya and Tu Quoque. How else can they proceed? They know what is in the texts. They know what states, societies, families suffused with Islam are taught. They know the tenets. They know the attitudes. They are well used to the atmospherics. They just don’t know how to handle those Infidels who also know those texts, those teachings, those attitudes, those atmospherics.

And there is nothing they can do to stop more and more Infidels, as they pick up their newspapers or turn on the evening news, from realizing how much of it is about this or that local manifestation of the worldwide and permanent Jihad — which can only get worse, and examples of which will only proliferate. Those Infidels will find out, slowly and then more rapidly, in greater and greater numbers, about Islam. There is nothing Islamic apologists can do about this, try as they will to lie, or to hide, or to distract with irrelevancies, or by appeals to Western “guilt” and false claims of victimization. Islam itself, as the vehicle for Arab imperialism, is the most successful imperialist project in history, the force which caused whole peoples to jettison and ignore, or despise, their own histories, pre-Islamic or non-Islamic. In light of that, the raising of idiotic claims of “racism” will not forever prevent Infidels, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and all others, everywhere and not just here in this country, from finding out about Islam.

It’s too late. Cat’s out of the bag. The Qur’an is just a click away (www.quranbrowser.com). And so are the Hadith. And so is the Sira — or you can read the texts about Muhammad, the Muslim texts, the texts of Qur’an and Hadith and Muslim Sira, and Muslim commentators and historians, with connective tissue and organizing principle supplied by Robert Spencer.

There is nothing these people can do about all that, except what they have been doing all along: “three Abrahamic faiths,” “one of world’s great religions,” “hijacked” or “perverted” by “extremists,” or adducing in support of this preposterousness a handful of Qur’anic phrases: “there is no compulsion in religion” (which does not mean what an Infidel who reads only those words would naturally take it to mean), and 5.32 but not 5.33 (Bush does it, Blair does it, even semi-educated fleas do it). Or if not the Qur’an, then one of the inauthentic Hadiths from one of the unauthoritative collections: Karen Armstrong loves the one about Muhammad returning from the “Lesser Jihad” of war to the “Greater Jihad” of domestic life, without recognizing that the hadith in question is not widely accepted as authentic. Why, I can write the Mosque-Outreach script for Infidels myself, and so can you, dear reader, and so can any man.

Here’s a case study, based on the posts of a Muslim who dropped by Jihad Watch a few days ago. He asked:

My questions to you are: Do you personally know any Muslims? Do you have any Muslim friends? Do you know about the Muslim experience in the post 9/11 America? Have you ever visited a Mosque? Have you ever been to an inter-faith event (e.g. poetry recital)? Have you ever read the Holy Qur’an or any of the other Islamic spiritual texts such as the works of Jalaluddin Rumi or al-Ghazali, Rabia al-Adawiyyah, Muhammad Iqbal, etc.?

The questions are misplaced. Many of the readers at this site have visited those Mosque Outreach exercises in Taqiyya-and-Tu-Quoque. Many have read the Qur’an, and have read and reread it, keeping in mind several things:

1) About 20% of it makes no sense, even to Muslims who know classical Arabic. See Christoph Luxenberg for one attempt to solve that matter of philology.

2) The internal contradictions in the Qur’an are resolved through the doctrine of “naskh” or “abrogation,” so that, as in the systems of common law, where the doctrine of stare decisis ordinarily holds but later decisions, when different, cancel the effect of earlier ones (e.g., Plessy v. Ferguson is not valid after Brown v. Bd. of Education).

3) The doctrine of “naskh” allows the so-called Meccan suras, the softer ones, which were presumably the product of a time when Muhammad still felt the need for support and had not yet become as harsh toward Infidels as he became once he had taken control in Medina (Yathrib), to be cancelled or overruled or overturned by the much harsher so-called “Medinan” suras.

4) While there are more than 150 Jihad verses in the Qur’an — though only 27 appearances of the word “qitaal” or combat, the most dangerous ones, such as those contained within Sura 9, are among the very last “revealed,” and hence possess great authority.

5) In English or French, as Western scholars of Islam familiar with the original texts have noted, the Qur’an’s verses are far less harsh than they are in the Arabic. Many of the words involving the treatment to be meted out to Unbelievers, that is Infidels or non-Muslims, are of this kind.

6) The official Muslim groups tend to distribute the translations that are much milder than the real thing. Even those used by Muslims, such as that of Yusuf Ali, do not always adequately convey the real meaning. But that can be found usually in the notes, and it is important for Infidels to read those Muslim annotations.

7) The Qur’an by itself does not yield up its full meaning, and the Sunnah, that is the customs and practice of Muslims of the time, of Muhammad and the Companions, is the true interpretive aid, the essential means by which obscure meanings are teased out. That is why Muslims so often refer to “Qur’an and Sunnah.”

8 ) Islam is a collectivist faith that does not admit of free exercise of conscience. That is, it will not permit — often on pain of death — individuals from deciding for themselves that they wish to leave Islam, sometimes for another faith, sometimes for no faith at all. That Islam does this makes it akin to other totalitarian belief-systems that do not tolerate anyone leaving that closed system. In a sense, a Muslim who leaves Islam is treated as a deserter from the army of Islam, just as someone who is persuaded to become a Muslim, even without any real understanding and with very incomplete (often deliberately withheld) knowledge, merely by reciting the single verse of the Shehada, is regarded as a recruit to the army of Islam, someone who has been signed up, rather than someone who has been carefully taught in order to save his individual soul.

9) Yes, not only have many of those posting here visited mosques during those phony Outreach Programs, but we have made it a point to attend those utterly phony presentations of Islam, in which none of the real questions — about how Islam divides the world uncompromisingly between Believer and Infidel, and territorially between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb — ever come up. And of course there is never a discussion of Muhammad, that is of the killings of Abu Afak and Asma bint Marwan, the decapitation of the bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza, the attack on the inoffensive Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis, the tale of little Aisha, and so much else.

It makes no sense whatsoever, given the smooth taqiyya-and-kitman-and-tu-quoque so well-practiced and presented, for Infidels to attend any Muslim event without having thoroughly prepared themselves by learning about Islam, by reading the immutable texts of Islam, by talking to those who have grown up in Islam and left it, or those who, as Infidels, grew up in lands dominated by Islam — such as Hindus from Bali or Bangladesh, Christians from Egypt or Iraq or Pakistan, Jews from Yemen or Egypt or Syria, Zoroastrians, what few are left, who have escaped from Iran, and so on. One can expect only apologetics from Muslims — that is what our experience, individual and collective, demonstrates again and again. One can only take so much nonsense and lies, before even the most naive start to have things begin to make sense. They figure the whole thing out.

You offer, instead of honesty, a list of all kinds of irrelevancies. Jihad Watch is a pedagogic site. It is a site devoted to presenting all kinds of material about Islamic behavior and Islamic doctrine, and showing their connection. And it is also devoted to revealing the ways in which Infidels, in and out of the West, do or do not exhibit the traditional behavior of dhimmis — that is, the non-Muslims under Islam who were allowed to stay alive, and even to practice, within severe limits, their non-Muslim religions, but who were subject to a host of economic, political, legal, and social disabilities that together amounted to a permanent condition of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity.

In conclusion, a few questions, in turn, for you.

Have you ever compared the treatment, meted out over the past 1350 years, in all the lands conquered by Islam, toward the indigenous non-Muslims, with the way in which Muslims have been received and allowed to settle deep behind what they themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines?

Have you ever given the slightest thought to the possibility that the belief-system of Islam, with its Total Regulation of Life and Complete Explanation of the Universe, was essentially akin to a totalitarian doctrine?

Have you ever wondered about, or gone to hear, or read the books of, the many brilliant and articulate apostates from Islam, including but not limited to, Ibn Warraq (Why I Am Not a Muslim), Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ali Sina (whose site http://www.faithfreedom.org relentlessly offers arguments against Islam from those who finally left it, and in so doing found intellectual and moral peace), Anwar Shaikh (who has described Islam as a vehicle for Arab supremacism in “Islam the Arab National Religion”), and many others, the most impressive people born into Islam, thoughtful, articulate, coherent — and being joined by other thoughtful, articulate, sensible people who through no fault of their own were born into Islam.

Eventually some Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and Indian Muslims may be able to slough off Islam as an ideology through a re-embrace of what could be seen as an original identity: that they were merely the descendants of Hindus, or in some cases Buddhists, who were forcibly converted to avoid either death or the onerousness of the dhimmi condition. Similarly, in the case of some North African “Arabs,” they may recognize themselves as the descendants of the indigenous Berbers — so many of whom, under the cultural and linguistic imperialism of the Arabs, were so arabised as to become “Arabs” themselves. And they not only became “Arabs,” but in turn to oppress the rights of those Berbers who still, steadfastly, have managed to resist the very arabisation that the ancestors of the “Arabs-from-Berbers” did not. Similarly, given how educated and intelligent Iranians are, including some who once worked to overthrow the Shah, they will come to see the use to which Islam is naturally put, the damage it has brought to Iran. This can be made to frame the incipient anti-Islam sentiments of many Iranians in national terms, see the primitive desert Arabs as having brought the “false gift” of Islam to the superior civilization of Persia. Discussion of what misery the Arab “gift” of Islam has brought to Iran, and a recognition by Iranian Muslims that they are the descendants of Zoroastrians whose last adherents are now so oppressed in Iran, might be one point of purchase to undo or at least limit the appeal of Islam. Have you given that Arab supremacism for which Islam is a vehicle any thought yourself?

And you ask, who has read the Qur’an? You should have asked: Who has read the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Sira, should you not? In turn, one might ask: Have you read the Bible? Have you gone to a church merely to observe Christian worship? What do you know about the field of comparative religion? And would you allow other Muslims, your siblings or your children, to freely visit churches and synagogues and Hindu temples, and to read the holy scriptures of other faiths, and even to study those faiths formally, as many non-Muslims study Islam and the history of Islam? Would that be something you think should be encouraged for Muslims, both in Dar al-Islam, and in the Lands of the Infidels?

While I’m obviously not a fan of Bush and his underlings (I’d go so far as to say they’re the worst and most despicable administration to have polluted the hallowed halls of the White House in over a century), I do not have a problem taking a part from the whole, occasionally admiring the diamond in the rough who is Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

My perception of Rice is sort of akin to Michael Corleone in the first Godfather film–an intelligent, well-meaning, good natured, fairly honest human being who simply and unfortunately, and with skewed fore-knowledge, managed to get caught up in the underworld of his fathers’ crime syndicate even though he was timidly reluctant to do so. Right or wrong, he became swept up in the nefarious turmoil of his family business because of a sincere desire to protect his father from harm. Michael is an unapologetic character, but that does not make him unsympathetic. On the contrary, his initial inclination to remain outside of the Corleone clans’ chosen vocation makes him an entirely sympathetic individual of quality who willingly made sacrifices that would haunt him for the rest of his days.

Similarly and unfortunately Condoleezza Rice was simply drawn into the wrong crowd–the bad kids on the block. The respect I might have had for her had she not been a major participant in the Bush administration would be, I’m sure, much higher than it is today–you’re judged by the quality of your friends.

Still, I couldn’t help feeling a bit sad for her while she sat in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, understandably receiving a deserved pummeling on Iraqi policy and the President’s scheme to deploy 20,000 additional troops into the midst of the Sunni / Shi’a civil war (totally discounting our own state senator, the ridiculously out-of-touch simpleton, Barbara Boxer who managed to place the entirety of her leg in her mouth when addressing Rice by making the comment, “Now the issue is, who pays the price? Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So, who pays the price? The American military and their families. And I just want to bring us back to that fact.” Wow, Boxer! Way to retrogress the feminist movement to the dark ages.)

Condoleezza Rice is an exceptionally intelligent and talented person. She’s a classically trained pianist, having played with the likes of famed Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinist Mustafa Fuzer Nawi. Fluent in Russian, she also speaks German, French, and Spanish. She received her Ph.D in political science from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University Of Denver, Colorado.

From Wikipedia…

Rice was hired for her first academic position by Stanford University as an Assistant Professor in Political Science (1981–1987). She was granted tenure and promoted, first to Associate Professor (1987–1993), and then (she was off-campus from 1989–1991) to Provost, the chief budget and academic officer of the university (1993–2000), and full Professor (1993–present). In addition to being the first female and first minority to hold the position of Provost at Stanford, Rice was the youngest Provost in Stanford’s history. She was also named a Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. She was a specialist on the former Soviet Union and gave lectures on the subject for the Berkeley-Stanford joint program led by UC Berkeley Professor George Breslauer in the mid-1980s.

To say Rice is a highly educated, intelligent person would be an understatement. But a high degree of intelligence is not all-pervasive. The Secretary of State, along with Bush and his minions as well as much of the general populace of the United States and the world, simply have very little understanding of Islam, the Qur’an, Muslims, and the Middle-east. Of course, I’m not an expert on the subject either, but I understand what she does not–the continued rift and subsequent and inevitable violence between Sunnis and Shi’ites benefits non-Muslims throughout the world by fueling divisive chaos and disorganization between two separate and dangerous religiopolitical theocratic sects bent on brutal imperialistic expansionism.

Of course, my understanding pales in comparison to Islamic scholar and regular Jihadwatch.org contributor, Hugh Fitzgerald who writes an impassioned and reasoned response to Rice’s comment.

The Secretary of State recently stated that the Middle East will have to “overcome” the tendency to see things in Sunni-Shi’a terms. There are two things wrong with the statement of Condoleeza Rice.

The first is the o’erweening, history-ignoring idea that Sunni-Shi’a rivalries and hostilities can “be overcome.” The Sunni-Shi’a split long ago transcended the initial quarrel over succession. Now there are differences in the organization of the Shi’a and Sunni variants of Islam: in organization (the power of the Shi’a ayatollahs and other Shi’a clergy has nothing similar in Sunni Islam); in ritual (the Shi’a Ashoura, with its emphasis on self-flagellation); and practice (the Shi’a shrines and visits to those shrines, so offensive to austere Sunnis, especially to the most austere of all, the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia).

The belief that somehow deeply-held beliefs and attitudes can be “overcome” seems to approach all this as if it were a question of civil rights in the South. One of the silliest and most harmful aspects of American governments is the belief that many things are susceptible of change, or of change that will come quickly. “Let’s have self-determination now” or “Let’s end poverty the way Jeffery Sachs says we can” or “Let’s just get right in there and reform Islam.” A blend of naivete, ignorance, and arrogance, which yields a most unappetizing brew.

The second thing wrong with Rice’s statement is that apparently she cannot conceive of why this Sunni-Shi’a split is a good thing for Infidels. She cannot conceive of why chaos and confusion and endless hostility between the two main branches or sects of Islam is something to be exploited, not to be deplored. It appears that American governments want always to take the side of this or that plausible group of Muslims. First, it was the Shi’a in exile who managed to woo and win so many in the American government with their tales of WMD (Chalabi and his group), and others who confidently predicted that once the Americans “liberated” Iraq they would be greeted, those Americans, with an outpouring of joy and presumably permanent gratitude that “would make the liberation of Kabul look like a funeral procession.” It would cost, according to Wolfowitz and others, nothing like what it cost to maintain those sanctions — possibly a few tens of billions of dollars. And then it would be over. A “cakewalk,” wrote Kenneth Adelman (sometime purveyor of Shakespeare to corporations so that the tycoons and tycoonettes can apply “Shakespeare to the business world).

Many have in this farce, on all sides, in the government, and in the press, been weighted and found wanting.

Meanwhile, there’s something just over here, freshly scribbled on this wall, that I’d like to show our rulers and our pundits:

“Mene, mene, tekel upharsin.”

Do you think they’ll be able to make it out?

Yet Rice is not the worst. She is far superior to others who preceded her. If she invites comparison with two former and still nattering-away National Security Advisers, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, Condoleeza Rice only gains by the comparison. But that should not be the point of comparison. She, and all others in the government, should be spending their days and nights studying Islam, studying not only the texts — Qur’an, Hadith, Sira — but how those texts are naturally received by, not all, but almost all, Muslims, and figure out on what side the textual authority lies. They should learn about taqiyya. They should learn about the history of Islamic conquest and about the subjugation of non-Muslims — which is not only a matter of history, but can be seen today in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia (where the non-Muslims are to found only among the expatriate wage-slaves). They must learn what is so misleading about the phrase “moderate Muslim” — misleading and unhelpful. They must learn to detect the plausible from the true, to discover the smyler with the knyf under his cloke, as Chaucer emblemized the figure of Treachery he found in Boccaccio, well in advance.

They must learn to understand it all, and to understand not only the texts and the history, but the other attitudes that naturally arise in Islam: aggression, violence, inability to compromise, susceptibility to the most primitive conspiracy theories, blaming of non-Muslims for all the ills that should rightly be attributed to Islam but of course cannot be, and so on.

These are the things she, and so many others, including all of the would-be Presidents now eagerly seeking our support, must learn. Now, not in five or ten years. Now.

Below are three segments from the British television show, Dispatches. This particular episode aired yesterday on British television and focused on various Islamic mosques and gathering places, particularly a Birmingham mosque where hatred and swift and unrepentant brutality against believers and non-believers alike are regularly preached.

Of course, this is nothing new. Islamists, taking inspiration from the Qur’an, have been evangelizing such loathsome exhortations for centuries, while elevating their prophet Muhammad as a symbol of the perfect man in whom all should strive to emulate. Muhammad, a man who via the “divine” word of Allah, teaches that marrying children is a noble practice (in fact he did so–the nine-year-old girl, Aisha was among his many wives), that killing non-believers is justified simply because they don’t believe, that beating wives is necessary, and polygamy should be encouraged, is the prophet whom all Muslims should aspire to imitate in word and deed. Even in this day and age, Muslims strive for jihad in order to create a sharia Islamic state throughout the world.

I don’t want this to happen. Nor do I wish to be relegated to dhimmi status under such an oppressive and fascist (interpreted as the nation of Islam) regime. I have lately been reading quite a bit about Islam, including the Qur’an itself, and though I’ve never really been one to denounce an individual’s right to their religious beliefs and practices, the more I learn about Islam, the more I see the Prophet’s “religion of peace” as nothing more than a thuggish cult bent on world domination. Go ahead. Call me Islamophobic (such a ridiculous word), but this stuff truly, and I believe justly, frightens me.

Now I would simply like to see someone here in America do a similar undercover investigative report into various mosques and the religion of Islam such as the documentary below from the BBC’s Channel 4’s (thanks for the correction Veronica) Dispatches program. Unfortunately, there seems too much political resistance and repression of free speech in the States right now to allow something of that sort.

Grasping at straws over the US AirwaysFlight 300 fiasco back in November, Somali Muslims and Muslim-rights groups living in La La Land (Iran?), including the perpetually dubious Center on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), are demanding a prayer space in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport be set aside solely for use by Muslims and only Muslims–no Christians (or any other religious group) allowed, further proving that Islam is the most intolerant religion on the face of the planet.

“Where you have Christians and Muslims praying at the same time, it will create a problem,” said Fuad Ali, a Somali leader who spoke at a meeting of community members and airport officials Tuesday in Minneapolis.

While there are many Christians who could be considered intolerant, that is usually in spite of the fact they’re Christians. The Qur’an teaches intolerance to followers of Islam, so who do you think will be the cause of “problems” should Muslims have to share a prayer room with Christians?

From the WND article further down the page in reference to the November 20 US Airways Flight 300 with the kooky imams…

The Washington, D.C., based lobby group Council on American-Islamic Relations also complained, according to CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper.“Because, unfortunately, this is a growing problem of singling out Muslims or people perceived to be Muslims at airports, and it’s one that we’ve been addressing for some time,” Hooper said.

You singled yourself out with your incendiary and purposefully outrageous behavior. You perpetrated a choreographed stunt in order to garner attention towards Islamic religious discrimination that just wasn’t there. I don’t deny that Muslims face religious discrimination (or any other religious group), but the incident on US Airways Flight 300 was handled very professionally by the US Airways staff. Passengers, while alarmed, didn’t resort to panic or bigotry. The imams, on the other hand, acted like idiots and the public saw through their facade for what it truly was: a publicity stunt designed to generate a religious discrimination lawsuit.

Still, it could be morbidly amusing to witness a prayer room with Muslims and Christians together. One group might be praying for a safe flight home, while the other group prays for a speedy trip to paradise.

BY EMILY GURNON

Pioneer Press

Somali immigrants passing through Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport want a private place to say Muslim prayers. The airport suggests they share a room with people of other religions.

Like a new couple learning to dance, immigrants and their adopted countries often trip each other up, and the prayer-room issue is just one of the latest tangles between Somali immigrants and other Minnesotans.

“Where you have Christians and Muslims praying at the same time, it will create a problem,” said Fuad Ali, a Somali leader who spoke at a meeting of community members and airport officials Tuesday in Minneapolis.

The prayer debate was sparked Nov. 20 when six imams — Muslim religious leaders — were removed from an airplane after they had been seen praying in public. According to witnesses, the men also made anti-American remarks, asked for seat-belt extenders they didn’t need and spread out to different areas of the plane.

The imams took another flight the next day.

But the incident drew worldwide attention. Muslims decried the treatment of the men, saying it was discriminatory, embarrassing and fueled by false rumors. Others praised the airline for taking the men off the plane, saying safety must come first in the post-Sept. 11 age.

Ali said Tuesday that he and other Somalis want a prayer room so they will not be faced with a similar incident.

“What can guarantee that will not happen again?” he said.

Airport Director Steve Wareham said if the airport provides a special area for Muslims to use, it potentially would have to accommodate other faiths the same way.

“Our request would be you try the quiet seating area,” he told the Somali immigrants.

That existing area is a carpeted room that contains chairs but no religious symbols. It has been used for years but was never obvious to travelers, said airport spokesman Patrick Hogan. The airport intends to install more signs directing people to it on the mezzanine level near the Chili’s restaurant, near the entry to the F Concourse.

At the same time, there is no restriction on praying in other parts of the airport, Wareham said.

Other issues continue to rile some Somali immigrants. Minnesota is home to the largest concentration of Somali immigrants in the country. The state estimates about 25,000 Somalis live here, though community leaders say the number is closer to 60,000.

Many of the airport’s Somali taxi drivers refuse to accept passengers who are carrying liquor, because their faith forbids it. The airport says it is a customer-service issue and has forced drivers who refuse fares to move to the back of the line, which can mean a wait as long as three hours for another fare.

Wareham said he would recommend to the airport’s management operations committee that it hold a public hearing on the matter. He favors stiffening the penalties against cab drivers who refuse fares for any reason other than their own safety.

“To be refused service by a taxi driver is, frankly, seen as an insult, and we don’t want our customers to experience it,” Wareham said.

Somalis assembled at Tuesday’s meeting at the Darul Quba Mosque in Minneapolis also wanted to know whether the airport would provide announcements and signs in Somali.

Probably not, officials said.

“The challenge is not inundating the air with messages people might start to ignore,” said Arlie Johnson, an assistant airport director.

At least the issue of the prayer room was met with some accommodation, said Abdirahman Hirsi, imam of the Darul Quba Mosque.

“It’s a kind of progress,” he said. “And we hope the future will be better.”

The airport, meanwhile, has suggested they share the room already set aside for such purposes.

The incident with the imams, who took another later flight, has launched both criticism and praise for the airline, US Airways. Critics say the airline was profiling based on religion, while those who praise the actions say safety must come first in the world since Sept. 11.

Ali said he just wanted a “guarantee” that something similar will not happen in the future.

But the airport already provides the generic quiet area, and if it would set aside a special area designated for Muslims, it could have to accommodate any – and all – other faiths the same way, noted Airport Director Steve Wareham.

“Our request would be you try the quiet seating area,” he said.

That is a carpeted room furnished with chairs – but without any religious symbols, airport officials said. It has been in use for a number of years, but hasn’t been obvious, so airport officials have promised to put up more signs to let people know where it is.

The airport also said people can pray in other parts of the airport as they wish.

As WND reported, one of the imams, Omar Shahin, is affiliated with a Hamas-linked organization and acknowledged a connection to Osama bin Laden in the 1990s.

Treasury spokesman Stuart Levey in February said KindHearts “is the progeny of Holy Land Foundation and Global Relief Foundation, which attempted to mask their support for terrorism behind the façade of charitable giving.”

The imams had attended a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation, said Shahin, who is president of the group.

“They took us off the plane, humiliated us in a very disrespectful way,” Shahin said after the incident.

The Washington, D.C., based lobby group Council on American-Islamic Relations also complained, according to CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper.

“Because, unfortunately, this is a growing problem of singling out Muslims or people perceived to be Muslims at airports, and it’s one that we’ve been addressing for some time,” Hooper said.

CAIR, however, has its own ties to Hamas, having been identified by two former FBI counter-terrorism chiefs as a spinoff of a front group for the Palestinian terrorist organization.

A Sept. 28, 2001, story in the Arizona Republic that said Arizona appears to have been the home of an al-Qaida sleeper cell named Shahin as one of three part-time Arizona residents who “fits the pattern” of the terrorist group.

Shahin, identifed as being with the Tucson Islamic Center, said members of his mosque may have helped bin Laden in the early 1990s when the al-Qaida leader was fighting against the Russians.

The CIA at that time, Shahin said, called bin Laden a “freedom fighter.”

Witnesses to the imam’s explusion said some of them made anti-American comments about the war in Iraq before boarding the flight, according to airport officials.